There are lots of obvious reasons why miles are better than cash, like the ability they give us to book mini palaces on planes that look like this...

...or the loose routing/stopover/open jaw rules of some programs that allow us to see more places on one trip.

But what about the smaller perks we often overlook? Like free or nearly free change and cancellation fees?

Delta will operate a nonstop flight between New York (JFK) and Honolulu from December 17, 2016 to March 25, 2017 five day a week (not Tuesday or Wednesday.)

Delta doesn't publish its award chart, but it still has a secret award chart. The cheapest awards from the mainland United States to Hawaii are 22,500 Delta miles one way. But we can do a lot better than that.

Every day that Delta offers award space on this route for 22,500 miles one way, we can book it for 25,000 Korean miles roundtrip.

China Eastern flies its 777-300ER with flat beds in Business Class and a flat double bed in First Class for two people to share between several American cities and Shanghai with connections throughout Asia.

You can book Business Class for 77,500 Korean miles or 80,000 Delta miles, and you can book First Class for 100,000 Korean miles. If you book two First Class award seats, you can combine your beds into one large double bed.

The Ink Plus currently offers:

60,000 bonus Ultimate Rewards after spending $5,000 in the first three months
5 Ultimate Rewards per dollar at office supply stores and on cellular phone, landline, internet, and cable TV services
2 Ultimate Rewards per dollar at gas stations and hotel accommodations
1 Ultimate Reward per dollar on all other purchases
$95 annual fee

That means you'd have at least 65,000 Ultimate Rewards after meeting the minimum spending requirement (60,000 for the bonus, and 5,000 for 1x spending), enough to fly several Korean and Singapore First Class routes with no

Korean SkyPass offers co-branded business and personal credit cards to Americans through US Bank. The standard sign up bonus on the cards is a paltry 15,000 miles.

Because of the small sign up bonus, if you want Korean miles, you're normally better off getting a card that earns Ultimate Rewards or SPG Starpoints and then transferring them to Korean miles.

Reader Steven emailed to compliment my comprehensive series on redeeming American Airlines miles and to ask me to create a similar series for foreign programs that are transfer partners of:

Chase Ultimate Rewards
American Express Membership Rewards
Citi ThankYou Points
SPG Starpoints

I can't say I'll get through all of the dozens of transfer partners, but I will start with the most important ones and see how far I get.

Korean Air has multiple award charts when redeeming its SkyPass miles. There is one award chart to fly Korean, one award chart to fly SkyTeam partners, and award charts to fly Alaska, Hawaiian, Gol, and Emirates (click logos). Each award chart has sweetspots, so I will run through all the sweetspots in three posts. The post on Korean Air sweetspots is here. The post on SkyTeam sweetspots is here. This is the last post, about sweet spots when flying Korean's non-alliance partners.

Korean SkyPass miles should have your attention.

Korean Air has multiple award charts when redeeming its SkyPass miles. There is one award chart to fly Korean, one award chart to fly SkyTeam partners, and award charts to fly Alaska, Hawaiian, Gol, and Emirates (click logos). Each award chart has sweetspots, so I will run through all the sweetspots in three posts. The post on Korean Air sweetspots is here. You are reading the second post on sweetspots on the SkyTeam chart.This third post on sweetspots when flying Korean's non-alliance partners is here.

Korean SkyPass miles should have your attention.

As of 8 PM ET on August 27, transfers from Ultimate Rewards to Korean are back.

Transfers from Chase Ultimate Rewards to Korean Air SkyPass miles are "temporarily unavailable" according to Chase's website.

The transfers were also temporarily unavailable from November 2014 until January 2015. In that instance, Chase communicated that the problem was temporary and Korean signaled transfers would return in January, which they eventually did.

I've reached out to Chase to see if we can get a timeline on just how temporary this problem will be.

Delta operates a daily flight from Los Angeles to Honolulu and back on a 767 with flat beds in Business Class.